The Woman in Silk

by R. J. Gadney

  He often found himself reciting one or other of his father’s summaries. To do so kept the devils of terror and ill fortune at bay. Like not stepping on pavement cracks. Not walking under ladders. Not keeping the exact total of the IEDs you’d disabled. “Sir Edward Elgar played the Music Room’s piano after a visit to the waterfall Catrigg Force as the guest of his friend Dr. Charles Buck in Settle, some eighty miles to the south. There’s the Stone Drawing Room containing works by Rubens, Van Dyck and Claude Lorrain …”

  Elgar, keeper of a semi-secret mistress, had intrigued his father. Had his father similarly kept some lover secret from the world?

  He tried to rid his mind of that high-pitched voice. It was a long time since he’d heard it and, with the passing of the years, the fabric of his life, like the fabric of The Towers, had changed

  Passing years during which those old master paintings had been revealed to be of doubtful provenance; the floor of the Music Room had collapsed and the “Elgar Piano” leaned like a broken coffin against curtained double doors more suited to a crematorium.

  For as long as he could remember, the furniture in the Stone Drawing Room, Entrance Hall and Billiard Salon had stood covered in dust sheets resembling shrouds and the yards of leather-bound volumes in the Gothic Library’s glass-fronted bookcases had remained unread.

  His mother had forbidden access to the attics, said to offer sanctuary for pipistrelle bats from the vespertilionidae family. The doors to the basement cellar where Hal’s father’s scientific archive was stored also remained locked.

  There was a small derelict swimming pool connected to the ornate Turkish baths.

  He paused by the barred entrance to the lower floor that housed them. The abandoned Turkish baths particularly intrigued him. Like his forebears, he entertained dreams of bringing both pool and baths back into use. One day, well, even the Stirling family Crypt and Chapel might be restored to their former neo-Gothic glory.

  Low thudding brought him up sharply. Was it the snow beating against the windows behind the shutters?

  He thought he heard an owl cry out.

  Nearing the windows he saw one of the shutters had been parted from its hinges. A pane of glass had split and snow was blowing in across the windowsill.

  He glanced outside.

  No sign of the grazing land or the moors beyond. No sign of Moster Lees.

  No tiny sparks of light from the hamlets further afield, no signs of life in Stonsey, Gretan or Warely. Wall upon wall of falling snow was building an impenetrable barrier between The Towers and the world beyond.

  *

  Here he was. Home.

  The home that had tormented him as child because he’d never understood its darkest places.

  What he hadn’t understood had frightened him and he’d been too proud to ask his mother or any of the temporary cleaners or maintenance men who befriended him for explanations.

  There’d been no one whom he might approach for confirmation or denial of the dark spirits sharing his home. They made him fearful.

  “What is fear?” he’d once asked his father.

  “Fear? Fear is Nothing. Fear of Fear is Everything.”

  The door to the kitchen in the Victoria Tower opened with a creak.

  A single night-light illuminated the wooden table in the center of the room.

  The nurses had left out two paper plates of sandwiches at the head of the table.

  Propped against an unopened bottle of wine was an envelope addressed simply H.S. On the kitchen gas stove stood a saucepan of tomato soup.

  He switched on the main lights and saw a small Christmas tree had been placed in front of the shuttered windows.

  Mother and daughter must have been busying themselves in the family storerooms for they had decorated the tree with angels, animals, wise men, shepherds and the Baby Jesus he’d made as a child.

  At the top of the tree stood the faded paper cut-out he’d made of Sir Glendower’s statue. Sir Glendower was dressed as Father Christmas.

  Remembering his promise to Sumiko to call her he plugged in his cell phone charger and then walked unsteadily to the larder in search of a bottle of whisky.

  Over supper for one—ham and cheese sandwiches, tomato soup and neat whisky—he read the letter.

  Dear Hal, I hope you have arrived home safely without a hitch in this truly terrible weather. It is with great sadness that I have to tell you your mother passed over.

  I wanted to tell you in person as your mother so wished and before you heard the news from anyone else but Francesca and I are very tired and we have taken ourselves to bed.

  Your mother passed over peacefully two days ago in her sleep and as she instructed her funeral took place with all speed.

  We tried to make urgent contact with you but what with the phone service being unreliable and so on we couldn’t.

  Mr. MacCullum and the Vicar and the Solicitor and his clerk helped Francesca and me arrange the small cremation and her ashes are scattered in the Moster Lees churchyard again according to her instructions.

  We took the liberty of laying a wreath from you upon the grave. I give you my greatest sympathy as does Francesca and if it is all right with you we would like to stay here until we can make new living arrangements in the New Year.

  I hope you find your room warm enough. We lit a fire in the grate. We look forward to seeing you in the morning for breakfast.

  With sympathy from us both, Teresa and Francesca

  PS. Don’t forget to take your medication. The nice doctor from Headley Court has spoken with me and I look forward to continue helping with your convalescence that’s going so well and taking good care of you.

  He sat staring at the reflected lights flickering on the surface of the tiles above the cooking range. He dumped the paper plates and soup bowl in the kitchen bin and took the bottle of whisky and a glass to his room.

  A shadow, his own, stretched to the kitchen doorway. It seemed to move, to form a face.

  He stood still listening. Tap. Tap. Tap. Dripping water from a leak? His shadow was the shadow of a hanging man.

  He leaned heavily against the kitchen table. All be better in the morning. Call Sumiko then. Take a Chinook to the Land of Nod. Take a bloody Lormetazepam.

  Which was what he did.

  His feet began to hurry for the staircase and at first his body refused to follow suit. The staircase was wooden. Like most of the floorboards, it issued its special creaks of warning.

  The door to his mother’s room faced him and he felt drawn to look inside.

  The walls were a patchwork of old silk and stucco stained by years of penetrative damp. He glanced at the paraphernalia of twenty-first-century geriatric care. Height-adjustable bed rails. Waterproof maintenance pads. Electric mobility wheelchair. Four-wheel walker with detachable shopping basket. Care kit as good as new.

  This was where she’d died. The room where he’d heard the doctor ask a hundred times: “How are we today?” As if he didn’t know. She’s dying.

  The Vicar would drift in. Always he said, oddly with great slowness: “In a bit of a dash—can’t stay long, my lamb.” A gaunt figure, a shepherd’s kindly son and former probation officer who’d seen The Shining and followed Glory’s Light. “How’s our spirits this day?” he’d inquire with a look of pain. If Mother knew she didn’t say. “There’s no one here at present. If you leave your name and number we’ll get back to you.” Like hell we will.

  The fire in his bedroom grate burned low.

  Here I am, home for the first time without Mother. He tried and failed to remember when last he’d stayed at The Towers without her.

  Here I am. Standing in the center of my room, once my nursery: along with its Japanese six-panel folding screen, the early nineteenth-century byobu of the Edo period, its delicate black-and-white images of figures dancing on a golden floor holding fans. Here were the familiar African hides, the Indian rugs, lace curtains, the crochet blankets on the formidable mahogany bed.

/>   The wallpaper had been there for decades. The patterns of gathered and wreathed feathery flowers had long since faded. They’d been chosen by his mother who believed they’d calm the young Hal’s overwhelming fear of darkness. When they failed to do so she’d leave the bedroom door ajar so the landing light’s beam might do the trick. Leaving on a landing light remained an occasional nocturnal habit he never kicked. Yet the dull light still created shadows in the recesses of the high ceiling, creeping shadows that presaged nightmares.

  Either Sister Vale or her daughter had arranged his cotton pajamas on the goose down pillows.

  He changed out of his clothes and ran the hot tap of the large Victorian washbasin. Its stained glaze had webs of cracks and there were patches of green behind the heavy taps. The tepid brackish water spluttered across the basin, an intermittent putrid gush, producing a clanging in the water pipes somewhere within the wall.

  He filled a china beaker and swallowed his pills; then remembered he’d left his supply of Lormetazepam downstairs in the kitchen, and his promise to telephone Sumiko. It would have to wait till morning. Or would it?

  He wanted to hear her voice.

  Rehearsing the lines to persuade her to join him for Christmas, he returned downstairs to the kitchen.

  Then he froze—mesmerized by the power outlet above the baseboard. The cell phone charger wasn’t there. Neither was the phone.

  The landline would come into its own. But it didn’t. Stone dead.

  What in the name of God Almighty had he done with his cell phone?

  He opened the kitchen drawers. Not there. He poked about in the waste bin beneath the china sink. Not there either.

  Once more he climbed the staircase to his bedroom paying no attention to the creaks, the rattling of the shutters, the distant voices moaning in the snows.

  11

  At nine o’clock next morning, trying not to wake him, Francesca Vale opened the shutters in his room onto the landscape magnificent in sun and snow. Welcome sunbeams filled the room raising sparkles on the gilt frame of the mirror that faced his bed.

  “Good morning … Hal,” she said, perhaps unsure whether to call him Hal or Captain Stirling. “It’s a lovely day.”

  “Snow stopped?”

  “Yeah. Sun’ll soon melt the rest. Don’t mind me making up the fire? Mom’s bringing you breakfast in bed.” She broke open a packet of firelighters. “I’m so sad,” she sighed, “about Priscilla. I was there when she died. She didn’t suffer. And the funeral was lovely. Small, mind. You know, private. Not so many flowers being as it’s near Christmas and all. I shed buckets. Whatever … Mom said it was the loveliest she’d ever been at. We had drinks and nibbles here afterward. You couldn’t get here, could you?”

  “Alas. No.”

  She spread out old newspapers around the grate and the dust made her sneeze.

  “Francesca, you didn’t by any chance see my cell phone in the kitchen?”

  “Cell phone. No. Lost it, have we?”

  “Yes. And the landline isn’t working.”

  “It is.”

  “It wasn’t last night.”

  “It is now. Mom’s been on the phone to the solicitor. He phoned early. And he’s calling in at noon.”

  “Warren is?”

  “Mr. Warren and his personal assistant. Sophie Peach. That’s if the drive’s been cleared of the snow in time. Ryker’s using a snowplow.”

  Edged with sunlight, her shoulder-length dark hair was lustrous like her mother’s. He listened to her chattering, watching her crouched over the grate.

  “Don’t know what Mom and me would’ve done without Ryker the last few days. Deep, ever such deep snow drifts. Like a Christmas card—”

  “Good morning, Hal,” a voice called from the open door.

  Sister Vale was carrying a large breakfast tray.

  She set it down and straightened his bedclothes. “Porridge and cream. Bacon and eggs. Toast, marmalade and a glass of freshly squeezed juice. Coffee and hot milk. Breakfast for a prince.”

  Tall, like her daughter, she had a slow smile. Her voice was low. It drew you close to her. It wasn’t hard to see why MacCullum had said men fancied Teresa Vale.

  They were dressed in similar nurse’s cardigans: Teresa’s bright red; Francesca’s, pale lilac. Their short-sleeved dresses were cut below the knee; their waist belts fastened by nickel-plated clasps. Teresa’s dress was bright white; Francesca’s pale blue. Both wore nurse’s shoes with leather linings and slip-resistant soles. Both of them wore identical bands of white silk thread around their left wrists.

  “Look at your hands,” Teresa said. “What’ve you been doing to them?”

  “It’s nothing. I caught them … in a door.”

  “Dressings need changing. I’ll do it for you later. We’ll look after you, won’t we, Francesca?”

  “Yes, Mom.”

  “That’s what Priscilla would’ve wanted of us, isn’t it?” Teresa said. “You read my letter?”

  “Yes, of course. Thank you for it.”

  “She was a beautiful soul. She’ll be much missed by all her friends. I used to say you’ve more friends, Priscilla, on earth and on the other side than anyone I’ve known. She’d say: ‘Love is composed of a single soul inhabiting two bodies.’ And she said: ‘I put it down to one’s infinite capacity for love of my fellow human beings. And to one’s ability to accept love. Love is all.’” She sighed deeply. “What a way with words she had. Made me weep. Now she’s gone. The Towers is empty. Silent, you know. I always say you can’t put out the flame of love. Francesca and I miss her—don’t we, love? Mind, we have heard her loving whispers. Memory plays tricks, doesn’t it? You must be feeling it very deeply, Hal.” She tapped her heart. “Must be hurting inside.”

  “To be honest, I found it hard to see her in so much pain. We have to think of her going as a mercy—”

  “I told Hal,” Francesca interrupted, “about the funeral, Mom.”

  Teresa stared at him. “Believe me, I tried to have the solicitor and the Vicar postpone it. There was reasons for getting it over with as they did. Out of respect for your mother’s wishes. I was worried you’d be upset, you know. I mean, you not being there to say goodbye.”

  She turned her attention to Francesca. “Hal will be wanting his morning bath. You run it for him slowly, dearie. Nice warm bath’ll do you the world of good, Hal.”

  “You mean there’s hot water?”

  “I’m keeping it on in the mornings. Then again in the evening for an hour or so. We don’t want frozen pipes causing us more misery. You have your breakfast while it’s still hot.”

  Francesca smiled at Hal with coy approval. “I’ve taken the liberty of pressing your shirts,” she said maternally. “Everything’s freshened up in the wardrobe too.”

  “C’mon, young lady,” said Teresa. “Leave the master to his business. And don’t you forget your Velamorphine.”

  “I’ll try not to.”

  With that they left, closing the door after them with deliberate quietness.

  Mother and daughter had made a world for themselves at The Towers. A world that was, as it were, neither upstairs nor downstairs. Now his mother was gone, it was difficult to define exactly where they belonged.

  Teresa was a governessy creature of admonition. Behind the dark eyes there seemed to be a well of silence. She kept up appearances. Niceness was the norm. She aspired to refinement and the genteel, yet fell a little short of gentility.

  She very probably harbored social expectations for her daughter. So far Francesca wasn’t showing signs of the conformity her mother apparently admired. Francesca wore her heart on her sleeve. It was harder to say quite where Teresa wore hers.

  Breakfast and the hot bath cheered him. The steam seemed to bring the nervy excitement of a new journey beginning. Everything, more or less, felt back to normal.

  Standing by the bedroom window he relished the warmth on his face. In the distance he could see clouds of snow fil
ling the air. The sun played happy tricks, edging the white flurries with the colors of the rainbow.

  Yes. He’d ask Teresa and Francesca to stay for Christmas and the New Year. There was a more than sporting chance Sumiko would yield to his plea to join him along with Yukio and time enough to get the replacement Jack Russell puppy in Carlisle and deck the halls with holly.

  He dressed in a shirt Francesca had ironed, chinos, Tricker’s Keswick Commando shoes, blue cashmere jumper and Donegal tweed jacket.

  Striding along the landing he gazed out across the snows to where the snowplow was breaking through the last of the white piles blocking the sweep of the drive. It moved aside to let a silver Mercedes pass.

  Hal recognized the car. Warren the solicitor was early.

  “Sincere condolences, Captain,” Warren said, advancing across the entrance hall. “Sad business.”

  Hal didn’t know St. John Warren well and what he saw of him he’d never much liked.

  Known generally as Warren, he was what his mother used to call “a character.” Frequently, depending on the season, with a buttonhole in his lapel, he sported a pinstripe suit. The practiced harbinger of bad news, Warren invariably affected a sour smile, perhaps the mark of the man for whom life’s turned out to be a disappointment.

  “Your mother was a favorite at my firm,” he said. “One of the family. Never heard a bad word said about her. The sort of woman who remembered staff birthdays with flower seeds she’d dried herself.”

  That was the first Hal had heard about his mother drying flower seeds.

  Warren grinned and the grin stayed fixed. “Wherever she may be watching us … ” he continued with a priestly tone. “She’ll be deeply missed by all. We mean that very sincerely.” He might have been signing off a lawyer’s letter. “May I introduce my personal assistant, Sophie Peach?”